title: Area-level deprivation and overall and cause-specific mortality: 12 years' observation on British women and systematic review of prospective studies.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Prospective studies have suggested a negative impact of area deprivation on overall mortality, but its effect on cause-specific mortality and the mechanisms that account for this association remain unclear. We investigate the association of area deprivation, using Index of Multiple deprivation (IMD), with overall and cause-specific mortality, contextualising findings within a systematic review.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We used data from 4,286 women from the British Women's Heart Health Study (BWHHS) recruited at 1999-2001 to examine the association of IMD with overall and cause-specific mortality using Cox regression models. One standard deviation (SD) increase in the IMD score had a hazard ratio (HR) of 1.21 (95% CI: 1.13-1.30) for overall mortality after adjustment for age and lifecourse individual deprivation, which was attenuated to 1.15 (95% CI: 1.04-1.26) after further inclusion of mediators (health behaviours, biological factors and use of statins and blood pressure-lowering medications). A more pronounced association was observed for respiratory disease and vascular deaths. The meta-analysis, based on 20 published studies plus the BWHHS (n=21), yielded a summary relative risk (RR) of 1.15 (95% CI: 1.11-1.19) for area deprivation (top [least deprived; reference] vs. bottom tertile) with overall mortality in an age and sex adjusted model, which reduced to 1.06 (95% CI: 1.04-1.08) in a fully adjusted model.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Health behaviours mediate the association between area deprivation and cause-specific mortality. Efforts to modify health behaviours may be more successful if they are combined with measures that tackle area deprivation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, Medical and Social Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Alcala, Madrid, Spain ; Oxford NIHR Musculoskeletal Biomedical Research Unit, Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences, University of Oxford, Headington, Oxford, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Maria T
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Sánchez-Santos
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mesa-Frias
authors.forename: Minkyoung
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Choi
authors.forename: Eveline
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Nüesch
authors.forename: Angel
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Asunsolo-Del Barco
authors.forename: Antoinette
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Amuzu
authors.forename: George Davey
authors.initials: GD
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: Shah
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ebrahim
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Prieto-Merino
authors.forename: Juan P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Casas
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D002423:Cause of Death; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D009026:Mortality; D011446:Prospective Studies; D006113:United Kingdom / Q000453:epidemiology; D016387:Women's Health